Famed Canadian architect Arthur Erickson’s Vancouver home in danger of being bulldozed

The western part of our country has a reputation for not preserving tangible landmarks from its past when they stand in the way of "progress."

Take Arthur Erickson House, the little cottage where the world-renowed architect lived for 50 years until just a few months before his death in 2009 at age 84.

Preservationists are fighting to protect the home and grounds, which are in danger of being bulldozed to make way for redevelopment of the property in Vancouver's affluent Point Grey neighbourhood, the Globe and Mail reports.

The problem stems partly from the fact that despite his fame, Erickson died deeply in debt, which needs to be repaid in order to stave off handing over the property to creditors. Those who want the home preserved are beating the bushes for donors to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Erickson bought the 850-square-foot cottage in 1957 for $11,000, the Globe said. Built in 1924, it sits on two city lots surrounded by a lush garden. The Globe said the land alone now is worth $3.1 million, with the house assessed at $6,300 for tax purposes. In any other Vancouver neighbourhood it would be considered a teardown.

“This was the locus of creativity for Canada’s most famous architect,” Donald Luxton, president of the Heritage Vancouver Society, told the Globe. “It is a unique site with a rich history and one of the first true West Coast modern gardens."

Erickson had a towering career, designing modest family homes and grand public buildings in concrete and glass such as the Vancouver Law Courts, Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, Simon Fraser University and the Canadian embassy in Washington.

One of my favourites is the University of Lethbridge, which is embedded into a coulee in the southern Alberta city. Though, like many of Erickson's designs, form sometimes took a back seat to functionality when it came to things like air circulation.

Friend and fellow Vancouver architect Bing Thom called Erickson one of the great Canadians.

"I think as an architect, certainly there is no, no Canadian architect has achieved what he has from international recognition and accolades from all over, because he has just done so much to put Canadian architecture on the map," Thom told CBC News at the time of his death.

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Erickson was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1992 and friends set up the Arthur Erickson Foundation, the Globe said.

Vancouver developer and philanthropist Peter Wall came to the rescue, giving Erickson a mortgage so he could stay in his Point Grey home. But with Erickson's death, Wall wanted the foundation to repay the $325,000 loan, plus $230,000 in interest, to his Wall Financial Corp.

“I looked after him when he was alive," Wall told the Globe. "The lenders basically would have foreclosed on his house. It never was a gift. I always said that. It was basically a loan.”

The foundation paid back the money but has had to take out another mortgage, with the first monthly payment due in mid-April, the Globe said.

The foundation is looking into turning Erickson's house, which hosted the likes of Pierre Trudeau and dancer Rudolf Nureyev, into a museum.

“He is Canada’s greatest architect, and he is one of the greatest architects of the period,” chairwoman Phyllis Lambert, also founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, told the Globe.

Lambert added that she's still owed $150,000 from a second mortgage on the property but has not asked for the money.

Condo marketer Bob Rennie, who brokered the original mortgage between Wall and the foundation, told the Globe there's a limited amount of philanthropic funding available for all the worthy causes that deserve it.

"The historic monument is not that dilapidated house," said the man known as Vancouver's "condo king."

Hopefully, if developers do replace Erickson's cottage with a couple of monster homes or luxury condos, there'll be a plaque of some kind to mark his time there.